


Foolish

by marcceh



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Embarrassment, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Enemies to Lovers, Loads of Denial, M/M, Other, Unreliable Narrator, Utter embarassment, developing/ambiguous relationship outcomes, quite cracktastic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-30
Updated: 2019-10-30
Packaged: 2021-01-13 22:31:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,288
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21233726
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/marcceh/pseuds/marcceh
Summary: Anderson is a besotted fool (says Sherlock).(one month later, sequel toOptimist)





	Foolish

  
  
  
  


Sherlock is busy collecting a very important sample - a spot of clay that does not  _ belong,  _ not in this habitat, lying suspiciously close to a footprint - when Enemy Number One shows up.

He stands calmly right behind the police line, hands poised atop his umbrella handle, and blinks. To all the world, he might look politely waiting. Sherlock knows better. This is his brother Mycroft Holmes’s way of saying,  _ William Sherlock Scott Holmes, you get right over here, right now.  _

Sherlock opts to ignore him.

It’s a mistake; it only escalates the situation.

He glances at Mycroft out of the corner of his eye a moment later to find him smiling sedately at Sherlock’s forensic officer. (His jaw drops).

Before he realizes it, Sherlock’s storming over to Have Words with his brother.

“What are you  _ doing _ here, Mycroft?” Sherlock hisses, ducking under the tape to invade his brother’s space for maximum effect.

“Sherlock.” Mycroft greets him warmly, the two-faced snit. “I haven’t seen you properly in weeks. I thought we could get lunch.”

Sherlock makes a hugely skeptical face at his brother.

“Do you remember your twelve steps?” Mycroft asks, looking him over,  _ deducing him, _ Sherlock was certain.

“I don’t need a nanny!” Sherlock retorts. “Go  _ away _ Mycroft.”

“Is it so wrong of me to want to catch up with my favorite brother?”

“Yes! It’s wrong, on SO many levels! Now get out before someone sees you!”

Mycroft’s face does what Sherlock surmises is a very polite grimace.

“Sherlock, what is your...friend doing with his hand?”

Sherlock looks where Mycroft is looking, and scowls. Anderson, that idiot, that besotted fool, is trying to catch Mycroft’s attention.

“You mean waving?” Sherlock asks sarcastically. Mycroft frowns, just a tiny bit, not caring for it.

Aha. Anderson’s one that Mycroft’s already tried to turn, but with no success. Sherlock supposes he has Lestrade to thank for that; none of his department have agreed to play spy for Mycroft. Except, maybe it’s not a win after all, because Anderson has since then been trying to get into Mycroft’s pants. It’s been a hellish month.

Anderson starts to make his way over, stepping over one corpse and nearly tripping over the other. Mycroft startles imperceptibly, and Sherlock grins like a shark.

“You better leave, unless you want him to ask you out on a romantic carriage ride again,” Sherlock taunts.

“I’ll call you later, Sherlock,” Mycroft says, stepping into a black SUV that appears out of nowhere. “Do pick up this time.”

“NOT ON YOUR LIFE!” Sherlock yells after the leaving vehicle.

“Drat,” Anderson says with a huff, hands on his knees as he catches his breath beside Sherlock. “I just missed him.”

“Yes you did,” Sherlock says wryly. “Good work, Anderson.”

Anderson perks up a bit at that, before processing the words and realizing they make no sense.

“Did he say anything about me?” Anderson asks. 

They have been on three dates, Sherlock knows, because Anderson never fails to bring up Mycroft in some way, shape, or form. It’s agonizing. Sherlock spent his entire childhood with the oaf, and has finally rid himself of the overbearing sibling. He doesn’t need Mycroft butting his big nose into Sherlock’s work, his  _ work, _ via Anderson of all people. Yes, that’s it, that’s why it is so completely grating. 

“He says if there’s one thing he could wish to come true, it would be never having to see your old mug again,” Sherlock deadpans. 

Anderson gapes at him, then follows Sherlock back into the crime scene.

“That’s not funny, Sherlock!” he calls after him. “Don’t say things like that!”

.

“We held hands,” Anderson says, all moony and loony as he and Sherlock canvas the blood splatters in the old woman’s home (ice pick, crime of passion, perp unusually short). 

He means date number three. Sherlock pretends not to hear him, as Anderson has told this story in lurid detail twice already and Sherlock has had enough trouble trying to forget it.

“It was awfully romantic,” Anderson recounts, and Sherlock steels himself for a sappy retelling of the story he’s heard more times than he ever needed. He will not react. Not this time.

“We were walking back - can you believe that, he walked me home -”

“He walked beside you, on the sidewalk, to a cab!” Sherlock shoots back, throwing his hands in the air. Drat. Well, he lasted all of two second this time.

“Yes,” Anderson replies cheerfully, not seeming to take it as a slight. “He hailed a cab for me, isn’t he wonderful?”

“He hailed a cab for you when he has his own driver!” Sherlock’s cries fall on deaf ears.

“Anyways, it had been raining that day, it was a Thursday, remember, and so there were puddles all around. He held out his hand for me and assisted me into the cab, can you believe it?”

Sherlock had yelled ‘that’s it??’ the first time he heard the story - rumors of hand holding were  _ greatly _ exaggerated. He’d nearly knocked over some evidence, too, he was so let down. He’s heard the story twice - three times too many now. He is numbed to these poor plot twists.

To make the “romantic” story even more of a let down, it wasn’t even a real date. Mycroft had had a meeting close enough to New Scotland Yard that they had ended up crossing paths as he was leaving. Anderson remarked he was done for the day too, and Mycroft waved down a car to shove him in before disappearing into his own hearse. Nothing romantic about that.

In fact, none of them were real dates! Why couldn’t Anderson see that!

Quote-unquote date number one had been a drive - to work. Mycroft had picked Anderson up en route to his office, dropping Anderson off at the police station. Where Anderson then twiddled his thumbs for three hours since he technically did not begin work until nine, and had no ongoing cases that day.

Date number two had been, apparently, lunch. Except it wasn’t lunch, it was a Skype call while Mycroft was on a business trip, tentatively during lunch. As in, Anderson had ate lunch at his desk while chatting at his laptop where he was witness to a live video feed of the back of Mycroft’s chair, as the man got ready in his hotel bathroom for his afternoon meeting and let Anderson prattle on about his day for eight minutes.

For all intents and purposes, Mycroft Holmes was a terrible man to date.

And the bigger problem is that Anderson has been slacking at work, so devoted he is to Mycroft. Obsessed. Besotted. Yeuch.

Personal life is one matter, but this Sherlock cannot stand for. The poor work ethic eats away at him. His was the sort of field that demanded a purity of focus, a singular concentration on the matter at hand. And Mycroft is ruining everything.

Anderson misses things (so what if he always missed things, so what if  _ everyone _ missed things, compared to Sherlock, he isn’t listening to Sherlock (because he’s too busy waxing poetic about one of three dates at any given time, or describing the long fingers or perfect brow or patrician nose of Sherlock’s enormous brother).

Just the other day! Sherlock had made the effort to be a decent colleague, and told Anderson he’d done well finding the connection between the stray clay sample and residue on the victim’s coat.

And his praise went entirely ignored! In fact, Anderson had said in reply,

“Do you think Mycroft dances? Oh I’d love to see him dance.”

Nobody should ever suffer the horrible, terrible sight of a dancing Mycroft!! This is the last straw!!!

.

“I need an assistant.”

Lestrade deletes yet another email, and wonders what is the point. There were only 8,327 more to go. He had no idea whether any of them were worth saving, at this point, and had half a mind to just delete everything, except he couldn’t figure out how. Hell, most of them were old newsletters, they couldn’t possibly be important. He opened everything urgent or that might be of use immediately, and dealt with it immediately. He is a good person. He doesn’t deserve an inbox like this to deal with.

“What about that little bit you and Anderson have going on?” Lestrade asks. Only 8,325 more to go. 

Sherlock grumbles incoherently, and seems to shrink into his coat. Lestrade feels the room get darker, with the storm cloud hanging over his freelancer’s head. 

“What?”

“I  _ said _ he won’t  _ work _ with me.” 

Lestrade wants to bury his face in his hands. Not this again.

“Look, Sherlock - just lay off the dinosaurs, alright?” Lestrade says. He’s too old for this.

Sherlock makes a face.

“Mycroft’s not  _ that _ old,” Sherlock says, apropos of nothing. Granted, Sherlock made fun of this Mycroft fellow all the time, so possibly it was his way of dealing with things. 

Though - aha! Mycroft was the fellow Anderson was dating wasn’t it? So that was it, just a tiff between friends; it happens when one of you starts dating.

Lestrade deletes ten unopened emails in a row, and Sherlock makes a rude noise before storming off, yammering on about how he would hire his own assistant if this went on.

.

Sherlock huffs, sitting back in his cab seat. How uncharitable of Lestrade, first to deny him a working assistant, then to make fun of his brother. So unlike the man.

Of course, Sherlock made fun of his brother all the time (and much more cleverly than something like  _ dinosaur) _ , but Mycroft is his brother. His! He had full rights to poke fun at the monstrous creature. But Lestrade is...an authority figure! He had no right to go around making fun of other people’s brothers.

The taxi pulls up slowly to the dreaded destination. Sherlock looks out at the terrible house, cloaked in doom and gloom - of the most terrible, boring sort (oh if only it were a gothi victorian mansion, full of creepy mysteries. No, this was merely Mycroft Holmes’s house).

Trudgingly, as if walking toward his execution, Sherlock marches in, empty luggage in tow. 

Once inside, he sets to packing.

Sherlock tosses his skull into one bag, and shoves stacks and stacks of books into another box. Halfway through his looting of the bookshelf, he notices a volume of Russian literature missing.

“Ugh! He is always taking my things without asking!” Sherlock grunts, throwing his things unceremoniously into a trunk before stomping out to ransack Mycroft’s own library, where he was sure to find plenty of his own books.

That awful, horrible brother. He had so many things of his own, yet borrowed Sherlock’s like it was no big deal, kept them as long as he pleased, then tossed them aside when they he was done as if they hadn’t any value! That’s exactly what happened to the solutions Sherlock had planned on mixing in his chemistry set, before he found Mycroft had come home from university and poured them down the drain. And the cake Mummy had made for Sherlock’s birthday. And the astronomy book Sherlock had bought with his own money! He’d saved for weeks and then saved the gorgeous tome for that weekend, but Mycroft had taken it straight out of his room, read the entire thing, and critiqued it for its faults at the breakfast table before Sherlock had gotten the chance to even crack it open, ruining the whole experience.

Well, no more!

Sherlock wasn’t staying one second more with this fat oaf under the same roof. So what if he had nowhere to go if he wanted to stay in London? That wasn’t true - he had friends! He knew people! He could bum a couch a night or two, before he found a place.

.

Sherlock sits down gingerly on the creaky sofa-slash-futon as his face spasms in an approximation of a polite smile of gratitude, as Angelo chatters on about he and his boyfriend’s honeymoon plans. 

It is a small flat.

It’s practically a studio (they plan to move after the wedding).

It was very nice of them to let him stay, really. 

Really nice. 

His luggage practically covers half the floor, but that hasn’t put them off at all, oh no, they’re such gracious hosts they’re inviting him to come look at all their vacation photos and asking all sorts of personal and awful questions and oh they really were nice people.

.

Two knocks sound at the front door, followed immediately by the doorbell, a long chiming sound that plays quite an annoying tune. It barely gets two notes in before the urgent visitor presses again, and again and again, and rings the doorbell possibly ten times in three seconds.

“Alright, I’m coming!” Anderson yells, tripping over his wooly socks to answer the door. Goodness. He’d better have won a trip to Bermuda or something. Oh, that was a nice thought - him and Mycroft, lounging seaside. Ahem. He pulls the door back - 

\- only to find Holmes the younger standing sullenly on his doorstep. Surrounded in pieces of vintage luggage. Glaring at him.

“Well?” Sherlock finally asks, after a very long stalemate. “Aren’t you going to invite me in?”

“Invite you in! I mean, yes, well,” Anderson holds the door open, and gets out of the way. “Wait, hold on, no! Why do you have all the bags? Are you moving? Are you moving  _ in? _ Sherlock!”

In fact, Anderson ends up dragging in half the bags himself, and then making the posh prat a cup of tea, as per very precise instructions, while said prat snoops around his flat. Anderson lets him. He’s a bit proud of the place really. He might not have been a month ago, but, well, dating Mycroft Holmes meant standards. Standards, really, capital S.

Not that Mycroft Holmes had ever visited (save driving by his address the First Date to pick him up for a tea). But if he had! He would find a tastefully done up space, rather than the messy bachelor pad Anderson previously inhabited. 

He delivers the tea to a grumpy Sherlock shooting him a very suspicious look.

“You’ve recently moved a lot of things around,” Sherlock says.

“Well, yes.”

“And got rid of lots of things.”

“Well…”

“To make space for another person.”

“I certainly wasn’t anticipating you!” 

Sherlock scowls, as if Anderson  _ should _ have anticipated him.

“Look, now,” Anderson starts. He cuts off with a sigh and sets his own mug down on the table (not before grabbing a coaster), and puts his hands on his hips to level a glare right back. And he can do so pretty effectively too, being near the same height as him (it always gets Donovan, how Sherlock can look straight over her head and ignore her).

“You’ve been simply  _ rude _ these past weeks, and it’s starting to affect work,” Anderson says. Sherlock gasps, actually  _ recoiling _ , and he can see the indignation build in his expression.

_ “I’ve _ been affecting work with my behavior?  _ I have?” _ Sherlock shoots back. He laughs darkly. “You’re the one so busy mooning over my brother you haven’t been able to tell B- blood from AB-!”

“For the last time, you can’t tell blood types on sight!! And you as well as anyone know that I’ve been on top of my game past few weeks, was I not the one who noticed the clay first, that caught the Riverside Killer?”

“We’re not calling him that! Only two of the victims were found by the river, and they weren’t killed there!”

“But I did spot it!”

“Oh congratulations, you, a forensic scientist, took ten minutes to stop ogling my brother’s arse and did your job!”

“You’ve been snippier - ten times snippier! For weeks! If you’re just going to come here and lob insults at me, well, you know where the door is.” Anderson points, as if Sherlock needed reminding. “Mycroft’s got  _ nothing _ to do with what’s going on between you and me!”

That last bit sets him off - Sherlock’d been steadily sinking into a sort of dejection as they argued, but now he looks straight at Anderson, eyes hot and stature looming.

“Mycroft’s got everything to do with it!”

Anderson’s jaw drops, but he composes himself quickly.

“What could he possibly-” Anderson starts, but he’s cut off.

With Sherlock’s mouth.

On his mouth.

In a semblance of something that might pass for a kiss, if you were being very generous with your definitions. No it is more of an...awkward smashing of mouths, by one person who is a little frantic and possibly frightened, against someone who was about to deliver an argument and not at all expecting it to turn out this way.

The next thing Anderson registers is the slamming of a door, because Sherlock’s apparently run off red faced.

At first, he thinks Sherlock’s run out the door, leaving all this luggage behind cluttering up Anderson’s living room.

Then he realizes the madman had the audacity to dart off into his  _ bedroom _ and lock himself up to ride out the embarrassment there.

A second thing dawns on him, and it is that Sherlock is in all likelihood  _ jealous. _

Jealous of his brother in general, because who wouldn’t be jealous of Mycroft Holmes, right? But also jealous of his brother because  _ Philip Anderson _ .

Anderson knocks on his own bedroom door.

“Hey Sherlock,” he calls. There’s a muffled thunk, that he assumes is Sherlock sitting with his back to the door, and curled up in some position of embarrassed agony.

Well, if Sherlock isn’t going to talk, Anderson will have to cut to the chase.

“Do you like me?” Anderson asks.

Sherlock groans as if he is dying, so he will take that as a yes.

“You know that wasn’t the best way to confess one’s feelings, right?” Anderson says, then backtracks, because he is understanding now that Sherlock was a rookie in more than one way. Possibly he had never made the first move. Judging by the appalling display earlier, it is also possible he has never tried to kiss anyone.

“I’m not mad, really,” Anderson tries instead. “But you’re not making things better by running straight into my bedroom.”

The sounds that follow suggest Sherlock is going to try to climb out the window.

“Oh, don’t do that, the window lock’s a bit broken and you’ll only land in the dumpster, really, Sherlock, and I’ve still got all your things out here.”

Something clicks, and he’s about to assume it’s the window after all but then the door opens and Sherlock gives him an even more sullen look than ever.

“You know he’s only using you, right?” Sherlock says.

It takes a moment for Anderson to catch up, and it raises his hackles.

“I won’t stand for you talking about him like that,” Anderson says, expecting one of Sherlock’s signature groans of exasperation in resonse. Instead, Sherlock seems to collect himself, and straightens his posture.

“I’ll collect my things.”

“Wait, where are you going?”

“Clearly I have offended you, and I will not overstay my welcome.”

At least he seemed to be feeling better, using that formal language he liked so much.

“Clearly, you have nowhere to go!” Anderson counters.

Sherlock throws him the most bewildered look, and pauses mid-gathering of bags.

“You’re letting me stay?” he finally asks, almost tremulously.

Anderson crosses is arms.

“Well, of course, seeing as you’ve already moved in, and assuming it is temporary,” he says to Sherlock’s fervent nodding.

“But seeing as you have designs on my person,” Anderson continues, delighting in the fact that Sherlock turns the color of a beetroot, “you’ll of course have to stay on the couch during your visit.”

  
  



End file.
